NASA - The Space Shuttle Comments Since 1981, NASA space shuttles have been rocketing from the Florida coast into Earth orbit. The five orbiters — Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour — have flown more than 130 times, carrying over 350 people into space and travelling more than half a billion miles, more than enough to reach Jupiter. Designed to return to Earth and land like a giant glider, the shuttle was the world's first reusable space vehicle. More than all of that, though, the shuttle program expanded the limits of human achievement and broadened our understanding of our world. It all started with STS-1, launched on April 12, 1981, just twenty years to the day after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. When astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen launched that morning in Columbia, it was the first time in history a new spacecraft was launched on its maiden voyage with a crew aboard. For an entire generation, the space shuttle was NASA. We've watched a parade of firsts -- Sally Ride, Guy Bluford, Kathy Sullivan, John Glenn and others.

We've seen astronauts float free, and launch and repair spacecraft like Hubble which have fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe. In this feature, we look back at the Shuttle's historic missions, the people it flew into space, and its achievements. Interactive Mission Timeline of the Space Transportation System Key The colors of the links correspond to a different orbiter. COLUMBIA A Space Shuttle On the Sun, One Last Time - Universe Today Universe Today A Space Shuttle On the Sun, One Last Time Article Updated: 24 Dec , 2015 by Nancy Atkinson [/caption] If you’re like me, you were probably wondering if photographer Thierry Legault would have the opportunity to photograph space shuttle Atlantis in orbit during the final mission of the shuttle program. Regular UT readers will recall that Legault has taken several amazing images of the space shuttle and International Space Station from the ground with his specialized equipment, with many spectacular views of the spacecraft transiting across the face of the Sun or the Moon.

It took a mad dash across Europe, but he was successful in chasing down the shuttle, capturing it crossing the face of the Sun several times, and once — just in the nick of time (above) — just minutes before the Atlantis’ final deorbit burn. “I went to Czech Republik, then Germany and now I’m in Netherlands, on my way back to Paris,” Legault said in a note he sent to Universe Today. “The last transit has been taken Thursday morning, just 21 minutes before the deorbit burn, therefore there are chances that is the last image of a space shuttle in orbit.” Earlier in the mission, he was able to catch the ISS and shuttle just 50 minutes after Atlantis undocked from the station, so his images capture historic moments of the final shuttle mission. In addition, this stunning view shows Atlantis docked to the ISS: Atlantis during the STS-135 mission docked to the International Space Station, July 15, 2011. Credit: Thierry Legault. Legault said this solar transit of Atlantis docked to the ISS was taken on July 15th from France (Caen, Normandy). Transit duration: 0.7s.

ISS distance to observer: 520 km. Speed in orbit: 7.5km/s (27000 km/h or 17000 mph). Atlantis appears on four images as it crossed the Sun, in this composite image. Credit: Thierry Legault. Click for larger version Four images of Atlantis crossing the face of the Sun taken on July 21st 2011 at 08:27:48 UT, and combined into one image. The images were taken just 21 minutes before Atlantis’ deorbit burn, from the area of Emden, NW Germany. Transit duration: 0.9s. Distance to observer: 566 km. Speed in orbit: 7.8 km/s. A Calsky image below shows the last miles of Atlantis in orbit with the transit site in Europe, the deorbit burn position and the landing site in Florida. Image courtesy Thierry Legault. Atlantis and the ISS side by side, 50 minutes after undocking. Credit: Theirry Legault. Click for larger version, and full version of the Sun's face.

Solar transit taken on July 19th at 7:17 UT from Czech Republik (North of Praha), showing Atlantis and the ISS side by side, 50 minutes after undocking. Transit duration: 1s. ISS distance to observer: 676 km. Many thanks to Thierry Legault for sharing his images with Universe Today, and taking us along on the ride of his travels across Europe to capture the final space shuttle mission in a way that only he can! What does the final shuttle flight mean for space exploration? | Science | The Guardian Final space shuttle mission What does the final shuttle flight mean for space exploration? After more than 130 missions over 30 years and at a cost of £120bn, the space shuttle programme ends on 8 July with the final launch of Atlantis. Two veterans of the flights talk about the thrill of takeoff, the view from above and the next step for mankind in space Discovery takes off from the Kennedy Space Centre in 1988.

Photograph: Roger Ressmeyer Wednesday 6 July 2011 15.01 EDT First published on Wednesday 6 July 2011 15.01 EDT Share on Messenger Close The ritual of hurling people into space is ingrained in the fabric of Florida's space coast , a 40-mile strip of eastern shoreline that runs from Titusville through Cape Canaveral to Palm Bay in the south. In 1961, crowds gathered here to see Alan Shepard blast off aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket and become the first US citizen in space. The Apollo programme to land men on the moon came swiftly after. From here, astronauts flew to the moon, trundled around in buggies, struck a few golf balls and collected lumps of moon rock before heading home. But this area, which lives in the shadow of the space programme, is facing the end of an era. For the past 30 years, Kennedy Space Centre has been home to the space shuttle, Nasa's great hope for making space travel cheap and commonplace.

Tomorrow, one million spectators are expected to gather at vantage points along the coast to witness the launch of Atlantis, the 135th shuttle mission, and the last flight of the fleet. When Atlantis returns in 12 days time it will be dismantled and dispatched to a museum . The space shuttle fell famously short of expectations. Estimates put the cost of each launch at an exorbitant $1.5bn. Preparation for a mission took months if not years. And flights hardly became routine. Rather than journeying into space once a week – as designers had hoped – Nasa managed only a handful of launches a year. And then there is the human cost. In 1986, the shuttle Challenger was destroyed on takeoff when a rocket booster exploded, killing its crew of seven. Nasa took great efforts to fix the problem and looked hard at the management failures that led to the accident. Then, in 2003, another shuttle was lost high up in the atmosphere, this time when super-hot plasma tore into the wing of Columbia after it sustained damage from foam falling off the main fuel tank during takeoff. Another seven lives lost.

Michael Griffin, the former chief administrator at the US space agency, who bemoaned Nasa's ambitions in space as doing no more than endlessly circling the Earth, called the shuttle "inherently flawed". The end of the shuttle era brings fresh focus on the shortcomings and mismanagement of the Nasa programme, but amid the criticism, it is worth recalling the achievements too. The shuttle launched and repaired – several times – the Hubble space telescope, which continues to capture spectacular images of the cosmos. The shuttle carried the Chandra x-ray observatory into orbit. And, of course, it was the workhorse behind the $100bn International Space Station , a 500-tonne orbiting outpost as roomy as a five-bedroom house. Thanks to the shuttle, astronauts know how to build spacecraft in space, knowledge that will underpin any future attempt to fly humans to other planets. For those who flew on the shuttle, it was the experience of a lifetime. No other rocket has carried astronauts into space and flown them back down through the red hot glow of the heated atmosphere to touch down like a glider on a runway. Here, two veterans describe the experience.

Scott Altman flew four missions, including two to repair the Hubble telescope. Piers Sellers, from Crowborough, Sussex, flew three shuttle missions, and clocked up nearly five million miles aboard Atlantis last year. Preparing for takeoff Scott Altman You wake up around five hours prior to going out to the vehicle. It reminds me of Christmas morning, the level of excitement as you get up and have that last meal, get into your orange launch-and-entry suits in the white room and then get on the bus that takes you out to the pad. There's a background level of anticipation, looking forward to the event. You get out to the pad about three hours prior to the launch. The commander gets in first and is strapped in. The vehicle is on the pad pointed upwards, so everything has been tilted 90 degrees and it is like getting into a different vehicle than the one you trained in. It takes a little effort to get all strapped in, but finally I'm in and the rest of the crew comes in after me. Everything starts to look like the simulators we've spent thousands of hours in. The rhythm feels like the simulators. You forget this is actually launch day and not just another simulation.

But as the clock keeps ticking, you go through your checklist, you get down to the point when everything's sealed up and you start thinking this is a little different. Your heart is beating a little quicker. Piers Sellers A few minutes before launch, the whole shuttle vibrates as it cranks its engines to one side and the other, and backwards. There's a real feeling that the machine is awakening. The seconds go by and everyone is watching. At exactly 10 seconds before launch, all the navigation instruments go from a rest position to active, you can see that navigation is tracking, that it knows where it wants to take the shuttle. A few seconds after that, the main engines light. You can't really feel or hear much at that point. You see the power come up on the indicators in the cockpit, you see the thrust go up from zero to 100% on three engines and then you feel the whole stack sway forwards towards your feet, and that is because the thrust of the engines is so great that it bends the shuttle and stack on its hold-down bolts, and pushes it to one side. They call that the twang.

The twang goes all the way, about 4ft, and then the whole stack bounces back. And at exactly the right moment, zero, the solid rocket boosters light and the hold-down bolts explode and off you go. It feels as if someone lit a bomb underneath your back. You just go flying up into the air, like a gigantic hand pushing you up into the sky. You see the launch tower fall by down one side and you are headed upwards into the sky. There's a tremendous feeling of power, there's a lot of vibration, noise, people yelling over the radio, and you get the feeling there's this 2,500-tonne ship going straight up. You are banging around in your seat, while everything is moving around, swaying around in the cockpit, trying to look at the instruments, trying to concentrate, but tremendously excited. SA The vehicle is shaking incredibly. You can get to switches – you have to take your time and focus on what you're doing and make sure you get to the right switch. As the commander I can see out of my forward window. Mostly you are facing up, so it's nothing but blue sky.

On my third mission, though, there was a thin cloud deck and I looked up out of that window and I saw it coming and all of the sudden it was like "whoooosh!" right through it. Astronaut Mark Lee floats outside Discovery, 149 miles above the Earth, 1994. Photograph: Nasa PS After about 45 seconds, you get the call that the main engines are going to throttle down so that the shuttle can ease through the transonic region , and you watch the thrust fall down on the instruments and then you are aware that you are going supersonic about one minute after you launch, but you are going supersonic straight up, not along, straight up, which is kind of incredible. At some point you see the sky go from blue very quickly to black as you punch out of the atmosphere. You keep hammering along like this at first stage for the first two minutes. There's a lot of vibration, a lot of rattling and rolling in the cockpit, until you get to about two minutes and then the solid rocket boosters fall off, each side of the shuttle, and things smooth right out. You have to make an effort to pull the air into your lungs.

Expulsion is not a problem at all, your chest just collapses again. SA At main engine cut-off, all three shuttle engines shut off and "bang!", just like that you're floating. The transition is instantaneous and you feel your body going forwards as if it's a compressed spring and anything that's not tied down goes floating by. You can't see the ground too easily until a point when the whole stack rolls upright and you go from inverted over the Earth to upright, and as you sweep through that roll, you can look out of the window and see the Earth opening up underneath you. I'll never forget that sight on my very first flight when we rolled in the direction and I was looking out of that window. I saw the curvature of the Earth, and the ocean there, the thin blue line at the horizon that is the atmosphere, and it was just an incredible sight. And then it was: "OK, come back in on the dials, let's get back to work." Floating in orbit PS We have a plan to get us through the first day in orbit. You get out of your suit, hang it up, then convert the shuttle from being a rocket into being a spacecraft.

You're putting out computers, moving bags around, stuff like that, and that takes longer than you'd think, about four or five hours. The next day you catch up with the Space Station and the day after that you dock. And that's exciting. The Space Station goes from being a very distant star when you can first see it to a brighter and brighter light, and then eventually this gigantic silver structure that's hanging there in the black sky above you. You sneak up below it and at the appropriate moment, the shuttle does a pitch around manoeuvre, where in effect it does a loop 600ft below the station, so the guys on the station can photograph the shuttle and see if there's been any damage and send all that digital data back to the ground. You do that and then you come up level with the station and slowly ease yourself in towards it, a bit like a very delicate parking job. PS The extraordinary thing, particularly when you're spacewalking, is that sometimes it looks like you'd expect it to look, which is you're flying over a huge rotating ball with a black sky and it's breathtakingly beautiful. That's how you'd expect it to be, only better.

But sometimes your perceptions can play some tricks on you. Often you feel that the world is like a big wall on one side of you and you are flying horizontally around it. At other times it's like a big ball above you and you're going underneath it. So your orientation changes a little bit but it sinks in that the world is a sphere, and you're going around it, sometimes under it, sideways, or over it. When you look at the world it's incredibly bright. The seas, the oceans, they look like blue neon. It's so bright, it hurts your eyes. You can see everything on the continents, you can see the rivers, the mountains, forests, cities, all sorts of things. You can even see big fields if you look carefully. SA I joined Nasa just before the 10-year anniversary of the Challenger accident. I really felt that Nasa had done its homework, that we'd learned the lessons from Challenger and that basically it was a management failure: the signs were there but Nasa didn't heed them as well as they could have. Six of the seven astronauts on Columbia [which was destroyed on entry in 2003] were very close friends of mine.

Three were my classmates, the other three were in the class right after me. Dave Brown had been my flight surgeon in the navy. It was a shock to me to realise that basically we did almost the same thing again, in that we missed the warning signs: foam falling off the vehicle was a threat and we hadn't learned from that mistake. A long time ago, during the Apollo 1 fire, Frank Borman (a former Apollo commander) said what we had was a failure of imagination, to imagine what could have gone wrong and try to stop it from happening. I think the same thing happened with Columbia. Returning to Earth PS To leave, you undock and fly around the Space Station and that's all very slow and balletic and pretty, but not very dramatic. You then spend a day coasting around the Earth, packing things up and getting ready to come home. On entry day you get up early and it's a sprint. You have to pack everything away, secure everything and get in your pressure suit. The whole business really starts at the de-orbit burn.

You turn the shuttle so the tail is pointing into the wind, if you like, let rip with the engines for a long burn to kick the shuttle out of orbit, then flip the shuttle over so its nose is pointing the right way for hitting the atmosphere. Very quickly after that you start descending into the upper layers of the atmosphere. You don't see much to start with, but after a while you get this beautiful cherry-red glow all round the shuttle and you can see it snapping over the tail. It kind of pulses, but over the forward cockpit windows it's just a beautiful cherry red that you can see through. In daylight you can see through this red haze and see the world. We actually saw a sunrise come up through the red glow of the entry. SA From the moment you do your final de-orbit burn, when you're about 12,000 miles from your landing point, one thing you know for certain is that in about an hour the shuttle is going to hit the surface of the Earth. The challenge to you, as commander and pilot, is to make sure where you hit the Earth has a runway underneath it.

You really don't have any sense of gravity yet, but as you go through the entry a little bit, you'll go to hang a card on a Velcro spot or something and let go of it and notice it slowly floats to the floor, and you're like, "Wow, look at that!" And you do it again: "Hey, gravity, we haven't seen that in two weeks!" It's amazing. Your perspective has changed. You don't expect things to fall any more and when they start doing so, it's almost like a new experience. You're coming through the atmosphere and if it's night where you are, you look out of the overhead window and you start seeing this little green glow, which is the atmosphere heating up by the friction of the shuttle smashing through it. As you go further and lower, you start to notice it going a little bit darker, into the yellows.

On my second entry, I was looking out at that and I started to see it get a little bit darker, so I floated up in my seat a little bit and looked towards the nose and I could see it transitioning from yellow to kind of pink and I floated up a little higher and it was starting to go red, and it was like – "I don't know if I want to look any more" – so I floated back down in my seat because it just looked too hot, too brutal out there. PS The shuttle does a couple of big S-turns to slow down over the Pacific ocean. In our case, we came zipping across Panama and Cuba and up towards Florida very fast, in just a few minutes. You pop out of the sky at Mach five [3,840mph], and everyone below you hears a double bang as you go transonic. Then you do this great sort of spiral dive over Florida and come down shooting towards the runway, nose pointed almost at the dirt. At the last minute, the commander pulls the nose up and squeaks it on to the runway. You feel the main wheels go down, then the nose wheel, they deploy the chute to slow you down, and then you gradually roll to a stop.

At that point there are a lot of smiles. People are happy. Hopefully the mission went well, nobody got hurt, all the tasks got accomplished, and you did it all without disgracing yourself or your friends. I've flown on two shuttles and they both felt a little bit different. They are real ships with their individual characters and their own nicks and bumps. You look at the shuttle, it's not as if it's this pristine, shining, gleaming piece of metallic technology – it looks like a ship, it's got dents and burns and inside multiple crews have whacked the paintwork and you can see scratches and things. They are ships that have been operated and lived in and done these incredible voyages all with their individual characters. I am personally very fond of the shuttle. When they wind up in museums I'll go and see them and I'll be happy to see them like old friends. The future of space PS You will hear that the shuttle cost a lot of money, and it's very complicated and has some embedded risks in its design and all of that is completely true. But if you take the long view, you have to look at what was achieved with the shuttle.

You got a beautiful space station, an international space station, a complete 500-tonne orbiting laboratory run by 16 countries that I think is going to deliver some real home runs over the next 10 to 15 years. You got Hubble, not only launched but repaired and serviced four times, Chandra, and a whole lot of other instruments of science. But I think the most important thing that came out of it was we took the business of working and assembling things in space to a high level of artistry. If we go somewhere else, such as Mars, we are going to have to assemble our spaceships in orbit. We know how to do that now. Having put the Space Station together, we know how to do work in orbit, to assemble big structures and complicated pieces of engineering. We've taken a big leap forward in our technology and our operations. SA Nasa is re-focusing, re-grouping. I think the whole country needs to decide what they want out of a space programme and where we should go. I do think that, in the future, the big things we do in space are going to take the cooperation of the whole world.

So the International Space Station is a great partnership to start that effort moving forward to put people on Mars and explore the outer planets and to start extending humanity from our foothold here on Earth into the stars. I am hopeful that the spirit of cooperation will be good not just for efforts in space but for humanity in general, as we learn how to work together. I think we have made a transition into a somewhat unusual place for Nasa, that we're not exactly sure what the next vehicle is, what the next step is. But I think in the end human spaceflight is something that's important to people in general and to humanity as a whole, for looking out and pushing ourselves to ask the next questions and figure out what's out there.

Nasa employees weep at Kennedy Space Centre as half a century of American dominance in space comes to a close Published: 21 Jul 2011 Nasa employees turn out in darkness to welcome the space shuttle home after 126 million miles travelled Published: 21 Jul 2011 Engine used on penultimate space shuttle flight relit for NASA's new rocket | collectSPACE advertisements Engine used on penultimate space shuttle flight relit for NASA's new rocket NASA engineers conducted a successful test firing of RS-25 rocket engine No. 2059 at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. (NASA) March 11, 2016 — A rocket engine that helped launch five space shuttle missions, including the penultimate flight of the program in 2011, was fired again on Thursday (March 10) in preparation for the first crewed flight of NASA's new heavy-lift rocket. The space agency successfully test fired the RS-25 rocket engine for a full 500 seconds, clearing a milestone towards its exploration goals.

The next time that particular engine, serial number 2059, fires for that length of time, it will be to launch astronauts on NASA's first crewed mission beyond Earth orbit since the last of the Apollo moon missions more than 45 years ago. "What a great moment for NASA," said Rick Gilbrech, the director of NASA's Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where Thursday's hot fire test took place. "We have exciting days ahead with a return to deep space and a journey to Mars, and this test is a very big step in that direction." Click to enlarge and view the video in a pop-up window. (NASA) The 8-minute-long firing marked the first test of an RS-25 flight engine for NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket , being built to carry humans on future missions into the solar system, including to the moon's vicinity and Mars. Four of the engines, formerly known as space shuttle main engines (SSME), will help power the SLS core stage. The engines NASA will use for the initial SLS missions are from the 16 flight articles remaining from the retired shuttle program. No.

2059 last flew as one of the three engines on the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour, STS-134 , in May 2011. The mission was the second to last flight for the orbiter fleet overall. Prior to that, SSME 2059 helped launch the shuttle Atlantis on three missions, including two to the International Space Station – STS-117 in 2007 and STS-122 in 2008 – and on the final mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, STS-125 in 2009. It also helped power Endeavour's STS- 130 flight to deliver the Tranquility node and cupola to the space station in 2010. "It's a great feeling that this engine – that has carried so many astronauts into space before – is being prepared to take astronauts to space once again on SLS's first crewed flight," stated Steve Wofford, engines manager at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, where the Space Launch System program is managed for NASA. Modified for use on SLS, no.

2059 and three other shuttle- legacy RS-25D engines will fire at 109 percent thrust level and provide a combined two million pounds of thrust when they fly in the 2020s. Unlike on the shuttle, they will not be recovered for reuse, but instead be dropped into the ocean with the spent SLS core. The RS-25 engine No. 2059 arrives at the A-1 Test Stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center on Nov. 4, 2015. (NASA) The first flight of the SLS on NASA's uncrewed Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) is slated for 2018 or 2019 . The first SLS launch with astronauts aboard an Orion crew spacecraft is targeted for the 2021 to 2023 timeframe, depending in part on available funding. Stennis and Aerojet Rocketdyne, NASA's prime contractor for the RS-25, will next conduct a development engine hot fire series to test flight engine controllers and will continue to test RS-25 flight engines.

In addition, the B-2 Test Stand at Stennis is being readied to test the SLS core stage for EM-1, firing its four engines together. EM-1 will lift off using engines 2045, 2056, 2058 and 2060, which includes two of the three SSMEs that flew on board STS-135, the final shuttle mission, in July 2011. In addition to 2059, EM-2 will launch with RS-25 engines 2047, the third engine flown on STS-135, and two engines that were built up after the space shuttle was retired, 2062 and 2063. © 2017 collectSPACE.com All rights reserved. Space Shuttle | The Mary Sue by Isabella Kapur Jul 18th These rocket ship cookie cutters provide all the shapes needed to make your cookies into 3-dimensional shuttles, rockets, star fighters, and space buggies. The rocket cookie cutters even come with star, astronaut, and alien shapes as well, to help you play with your food to best effect.

Just imagine the icing possibilities! The company also has 3D dinosaur cookie cutters , including a Tyrannosaurus Rex and Stegosaurus. Now if only one of the ships offered was Serenity, we could reenact the first episode of Firefly with gingerbread. Each ship comes separately, at $12 a ship, and can be purchased at SuckUK . Check out more photos of the cookies and cookie cutters after the jump. by Max Eddy Mar 5th We've already seen a host of objects hoisted high above the earth with the aid of weather balloons, but Romanian YouTube user vinciverse did something a little different. Aiming to create a tribute to the now-retired Space Shuttle, he built his own shuttle out of LEGOs and sent it to the edge of space with a weather balloon. In the proud tradition of B movie makers, the shuttle is suspended in front of a camera with fishing line. While the LEGO shuttle will never make it to orbit, it's a remarkable statement about the Shuttle's importance as a symbol to people all over the world. by Eric Limer Sep 14th NASA has just announced its next development project: The Space Launch System (SLS).

SLS will provide NASA with heavy-lift capability the likes of which it has never previously seen. To boot, the development of the new rockets will likely include re-purposed shuttle material, making this project particularly cost effective. The project aims not only to replace the Shuttle program with a sustainable alternative, but also to considerably improve the distance mankind can reach into the abyss. The SLS rockets will be able to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and other types of cargo into orbit with relative ease. Powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel, a Space Shuttle RS-25D/E engine for the core stage and a J-2X engine for the upper stage, the SLS rocket should be able to put out a base lift capacity of 70 metric tons, upgradable to 130, beating out the Saturn V which topped out around 118. by Erin Podolak Aug 2nd On February 1, 2003, people around the world watching the Space Shuttle Columbia return to earth were horrified as the shuttle broke-up on re-entry. All seven astronauts onboard were killed, and the remains of the shuttle left a trail of debris from North Texas to Louisiana.

NASA immediately set about the daunting task of recovering the pieces of the Space Shuttle, and have continued to do so as pieces are unearthed. The recent drought in Texas has caused water levels to drop across the state, which has revealed a piece of American history resting on the bottom of lake. In the East Texas city of Nacogdoches, NASA has confirmed that a part of Columbia has been discovered. The piece of debris is a power reactant storage and distribution system (PRSD), which looks like a badly battered disco ball. by Erin Podolak Jul 21st The Space Shuttle Atlantis, which launched July 8th, has returned to Earth. Atlantis' safe return marks the end of an era, as it is the official conclusion to the entire space shuttle program. Atlantis and her four person crew commenced their landing at night, and touched down at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at an official full wheel stop time of 5:57am. It was NASA's 25th night landing, the 78th landing at Kennedy Space Center, and the 133rd landing in overall shuttle history.

During this mission, STS 135, Atlantis orbited Earth 200 times and flew 5,284,862 miles. STS 135 was Atlantis' 33rd and final mission. In the course of shuttle's history, Atlantis spent 307 days in space, orbited the Earth 4,848 times, and flew 125,935,769 miles. The space shuttle program is now officially over and the future of NASA and American space exploration, though sure to continue, is uncertain. by Max Eddy Jul 18th You've seen the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle as they transit across the sun , and you may have seen them from a soyuz spaceship , but you probably haven't seen them from Earth in broad daylight. Using only an eight-inch telescope and a video camera, astronomer Scott Ferguson was able to capture images of the ISS with the docked Atlantis orbiter over an hour after sunrise. His only trick, besides experience in astrophotograpy, was specialized software to predict the position of the space station -- important when the subject of your photograph is orbiting 210 miles above you.

Though Ferguson's video is certainly impressive, the Bad Astronomy blog claims that because of the space station's 300 foot span it can be spotted with binoculars. You won't see any detail, just an elongated point that, clearly, is not a star or a planet. But that aside, kudos to Ferguson for his incredible video. See it for yourself, after the break. by Max Eddy Jul 15th When it was announced that the retired Space Shuttles would be put on display at museums across America, it was a sweet follow-up to the sad news that the whole program would be retired. But The Universe Today's set of pictures showing Space Shuttle Discovery stripped down, looking sad and forlorn as it was towed to the Vertical Assembly Building is a painful price. In preparation to becoming museum pieces, the Shuttles will have their engines removed -- the three main engines in the back, and the maneuvering thrusters in the nose. The shuttles will also be thoroughly cleaned to get rid of any of the toxic chemicals. The result is a rather sad looking ship, far from the powerful vehicle that flew to space and back so many times.

With its windows covered up like that, I can't help but feel like Discovery has had its eyes poked out. Hopefully the Shuttles will look a bit less pitiful when the decommissioning process is complete. Read on below for more images of Discovery, which may or may not tug at your heartstrings. by Erin Podolak Jul 7th NASA is prepping for the very last flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, which will mark the end of the entire Space Shuttle program this week. The crew of Atlantis will conduct a range of scientific experiments, among them (and most notable for the ew-factor) is a baggie-based urine recycling system that may make pee drinkable. Yes, that refreshing beverage, pee. But before you become completely repulsed, rest assured the astronauts themselves will not be drinking urine. At least not these astronauts, not yet. The test will be conducted with an experimental fluid, to test the ability of established pee recycling systems to work in space. The military already uses a similar technology to filter parasites, bacteria, and viruses out of dirty fluids (including urine) for sanitary reasons.

by Max Eddy Jun 11th The final Space Shuttle mission planned for next month will have a unique twist: the shuttle will carry two Apple iPhone 4s to the ISS for a series of experiments using the SpaceLab app. The app, currently available in the app store , was created by Odyssey Space Research and aims to carry out positioning and other experiments with the phone. Though not mission-critical, and no doubt somewhat aggrandizing, the experiments will help improve SpaceLab and maybe open the possibility for similar functions on handheld devices in space. Once in orbit, the ISS crew will test SpaceLab's ability to determine altitude and position. Amazingly, the app can apparently do all of this without a data connection, instead using a sequence of images taken with the iPhone's camera as a reference and performing the calculations internally. The lack of wireless functionality is partly due to NASA's concerns about the phone's electronics interfering with station functions. The ISS crew will also calibrate some of the app's senors, and the app itself will monitor the effects of radiation on the device by watching for blips on the phone's memory during orbit.

NASA's Space Shuttle Program Officially Ends After Final Celebration NASA's Space Shuttle Program Officially Ends After Final Celebration By Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor | September 1, 2011 12:34pm ET MORE A Navy honor guard accepts the flags for all five of NASA's shuttles: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour at Johnson Space Center’s shuttle program celebration on Aug. 27, 2011 Credit: collectSPACE.com /Robert Z. Pearlman HOUSTON — NASA's space shuttle program came to its official end Wednesday (Aug. 31), just over a month after the final shuttle mission landed on Earth. Beginning today, all on-going shuttle related work — which is mostly focused on preparing the three orbiters for their display at museums — will be led by the agency's Space Shuttle Transition and Retirement Office. To mark the end of the program and to say thank you to its thousands of workers, many of whom are losing their jobs with the shuttle's retirement, NASA hosted employee gatherings at the centers that supported and oversaw the flyout of the shuttle.

After similar celebrations at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, the last of these events took place Saturday (Aug. 27) at the "home" of the shuttle program, Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "We're here to celebrate an incredible 30 year run," NASA Administrator and former shuttle astronaut Charles Bolden said, addressing the thousands of JSC workers and their families who came out for the "Salute Our Space Shuttle: Foundation for Our Future" celebration. "All of you need to leave here tonight with your chest stuck out as proud as you can be because we have done something that no one else was ever able to do and no one will ever do again." [ NASA's Space Shuttle Program In Pictures: A Tribute ] In addition to Bolden, the event included tributes delivered both in-person and by video from space shuttle program managers, astronauts and celebrities. Representatives of the Houston Astros and Aeros sports teams, actor Seth Green, singer Jimmy Buffett, Sesame Street's Elmo, and late night talk show host Jay Leno all offered their thanks for the shuttle.

"Thank you for your dedication, your inspiration and vision on the incredible space shuttle program," Leno said in a video recorded from the set of "The Tonight Show." "For over 30 years, you guys have amazed and educated, opened our eyes to the wonders of space travel and the benefits brought to our everyday lives." Outgoing shuttle program manager John Shannon, who's now been assigned by Bolden to assess options for the next set of missions beyond Earth orbit , also addressed the shuttle workers — and their families — by video. "I would like to take this moment to thank the team for all their hard work and dedication over 30 years that has led to a successful conclusion of the space shuttle program. The shuttle program has built the largest space station in history, has revolutionized science with the Hubble Space Telescope and has inspired a generation to dream of space," Shannon said. "But I would like to especially thank the families of our workers. Your sacrifices have allowed us to be successful. This accomplishment is also a great success for you and thank you," he said. Flying no more NASA flew its final three space shuttle missions — one per orbiter remaining in the fleet — earlier this year.

Shuttle Discovery, bound next year for the Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia, was retired first in March. Endeavour landed June 1 and is now being prepared for display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Atlantis flew the 135th and final shuttle mission, STS-135, last month. It will be exhibited near where it and all the other shuttles launched and most landed, at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. NASA's first two orbiters to fly, Columbia and Challenger, were lost with their crews to in-flight accidents in February 2003 and January 1986 respectively. "We have to remember two groups of people who are very special to all of us: the STS-51L crew and STS-107 crew. We stand on their shoulders tonight as we celebrate," said Bolden. To mark the retirement of the space shuttle fleet, Johnson Space Center paused during Saturday's event to retire the orbiters' flags, which were deployed outside the center's headquarters building whenever the shuttles were in orbit. Similar flags were flown and retired during ceremonies at Kennedy Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center.

Ellen Ochoa, Johnson's deputy director and a four-time shuttle astronaut, led the flag retirement ceremony, which saw representatives from the shuttle program's primary contractors hand off each flag to a Navy honor guard from nearby Ellington Field. Ochoa paid tribute to each orbiter in the order they first flew as their red, white and blue flags were retired: Columbia: "From the day she first arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in March 1979 until the day we lost her over the skies of Texas, Columbia served as the vanguard for the space shuttle program, a beloved reminder of American ingenuity and the invincible human spirit." Challenger: "The loss of Challenger and its crew in the piercing cold of that January morning could not and will never diminish the wonder of its brief history, instead reminding us how difficult and unforgiving human spaceflight is and can be and the fortitude of this nation to return to flight safer, wiser and more dedicated than ever." Discovery: "The fleet leader in space shuttle program history, Discovery spent a full year in space over its 39 missions.

Called upon to visit two space stations, the Hubble Space Telescope and to return Americans to space, Discovery served as the vehicle for some of the most daring missions in shuttle history." Atlantis: "By the time it landed on July 21st to complete the space shuttle program's storied 30 year history, Atlantis orbited the Earth 200 times on its 33 missions and entered the record books as the first shuttle to dock with the Russian space station Mir and the last shuttle to undock from the International Space Station." Endeavour: "Endeavour ended its career in the pre-dawn hours on June 1st, lifting the spirits of the nation and the world through its heroics and its contributions to furthering human exploration . During its time in orbit, Endeavour saved the Hubble Space Telescope on the first mission to service the iconic observatory and it also delivered the first U.S. element of the International Space Station to orbit to begin assembly of the complex that is now our national laboratory in space." Johnson Space Center plans to exhibit the flags, although where has yet to be decided.

Five for Flying NASA retired the space shuttle to devote its resources to sending astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, to an asteroid, back to the moon and eventually Mars. In addition to developing a new multi-purpose crew vehicle (MPCV) designed to take crews outward into the solar system, NASA is soliciting the launch services from four commercially-designed spacecraft to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station. "With the end of the shuttle program, we bring to a close a remarkable chapter in America's history in space and usher in the next extraordinary moment in our nation's story of exploration," Johnson Space Center director and shuttle commander Michael Coats said before introducing the son of a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory astrophysicist for one last celebrity tribute. Better known by his stage name "Five for Fighting," singer John Ondrasik played out the evening, performing solo numbers on guitar and piano including "Superman (It's Not Easy)," "100 Years," and "World," which astronauts used as a soundtrack for a video filmed aboard the International Space Station. Visit collectSPACE to view videos of celebrities and VIPs thanking NASA's shuttle team as played at Johnson Space Center's "Salute Our Space Shuttle: Foundation for Our Future" celebration.

Follow collectSPACE on Facebook and Twitter @ collectSPACE and editor Robert Pearlman @ robertpearlman . Copyright 2011 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.

Question: What was the last Space Shuttle to orbit the Earth, doing so on the 21st July 2011?
Answer: Atlantis